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$15.1M Construction Project Halted for a Single Spider

San Antonio spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation, Josh Donat has said that a planned $15.1 million highway underpass project begun in April is now “highly unlikely...we’ve been asked to avoid further excavation if we can.” The project, which is currently underway will have to be halted. Why? Because of a spider.

This single spider, the eyeless Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver, was found living underground at the construction site last week. It is only the second time this spider has ever been seen, the first being 30 years ago. It was added to the federal protection list in 2000.

This one endangered spider was located at the construction site, which means that the project to connect Texas 151 and Loop 1604 is on hold indefinitely. While the project is being redesigned to stay away from any areas where the spider might live, the state (along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Federal Highway Administration) has decided to release the contractor. Unfortunately, Donat says “There’s no timeline at all right now.”

Residents of one of the most congested areas of San Antonio now have no hope for reprieve any time soon because of this dime-sized arachnid. We know it’s important to be good stewards of our planet. Are we going to overlook this boon in money and jobs to the local economy for one spider? With so much at stake for humans, isn’t this going a little too far?

This is going too far for sure. First, I imagine a few people are out of a job right now because of this - how are they to support their families. Our values in this country are totally skewed when a spider is more important than humanbeings. I beleive we should do everything we can to protect our environment and everything in it but I think we need a little common sense.

I can agree with that to an extent, Pat, but there's no reason to cast judgment on someone just for being passionate about what they believe in. I know that it may be only one spider, but to those that are in support of the halt in work, that one spider represents a species that, as mentioned, has only been seen twice in recorded history. Since I am personally not effected by the construction, I don't believe I should offer an opinion or stance, since it would be a waste of potentially constructive thought on my end, but I have no problem voicing my opinion that judgment as a whole is repressive to the ideas of freedom.

The "drop dead date" for federal regulations is fast approaching and we are expecting more overreaching proposals. This is the last date that proposed rules can be finalized by the Obama administration, without fear that the next President will overturn them under the Congressional Review Act. Regulatory agencies are expected to release a flood of regulations before this date. This regulatory outburst, first noted in the final days of the Carter Administration, is known as "midnight regulations."

Financial regulators released a 279-page proposal that would set parameters around how and when Wall Street Executives make their money. The proposal, mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, is a five-year project spanning across six regulatory agencies.

In recent years, several conservative states have been at the forefront in tackling justice reform. As documented in the report Federalism in Action: How Conservative States Got Smart on Crime, states like Texas and Georgia have been able to cut back on total prison expenditures while also reducing rates of incarceration and recidivism. Now, Oklahoma is looking to emulate these great success stories, as a series of justice reform bills recently passed through the House and Senate. All that is left is the signature of Governor Mary Fallin, and Oklahoma will become the next state to implement a “smart-on-crime” approach to criminal justice.

The benefit of America’s federalist system, in which the states are largely free to set their own laws and regulations, is that these “laboratories of democracy” allow us to see what works and what doesn’t in terms of economic success. While there are numerous pitfalls in examining economic statistics, due to the wide variety of variables involved, you can learn a lot by seeing where people choose to live. People generally flock to locations where they can get a good job, raise their children as they please, and afford a decent standard of living, all things that directly relate to economic freedom.

Ahead of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress, FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon reflected on Barack Obama’s divisive presidency and described the agenda congressional Republicans should pursue in the coming months.

Much of the efforts to reform the justice system have been concentrated on front-end sentencing and back-end reentry reform. When it comes to sentencing reform, the idea is that a punishment should fit the crime. Rather than lengthy sentences mandated by big government politicians that ostensibly warehouse low-level, nonviolent offenders, judges should have the option to more appropriate sentences, including diversion programs. For offenders already in the prison system, rehabilitative programming -- such as work training and education -- would provide them with the means to learn skills so they can live productive, honest lives after they return to society.

Justice reform has become a hot topic on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress from both parties are pushing for substantive reforms that would bring rehabilitative programs to the federal corrections system, modify out-of-date sentencing laws, make communities safer, and reduce burdens on taxpayers. But reform would not be possible if conservative states had not previously paved the road.

Over the past several weeks, President Barack Obama has increasingly spoke of the need to reform the United States' justice system. In mid-July, for example, he spoke at the NAACP's annual convention in Philadelphia and called for reform of costly and unjust mandatory minimum sentences and, later, appeared at a federal prison in Oklahoma to further emphasize the need to overhaul the justice system to lower repeat offender rates.

It is easy to look at the decline in violent crime rates and believe that lengthy prison sentences mandated by Congress were the catalyst. Unfortunately, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley recently made this utterly misleading argument. But as the Brennan Center for Justice explained in a February 2015 study, crime rates fell because of "various social, economic, and environmental factors, such as growth in income and an aging population." Lengthy sentences that contributed to the sharp rise of prison populations had very little to do with it.

Last week, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave his support to the SAFE Justice Act, a comprehensive bill that would make a number of significant and substantive changes to federal sentencing and prison policies that have contributed the boom in federal corrections spending. Boehner's support is the most recent and, perhaps, most notable example of the growing consensus on Capitol Hill for justice reform.